Storage Strategies for Law Enforcement: Managing chain of evidence, growth in unstructured data

Law enforcement and public safety organizations are faced with massive growth in the amount of digital evidence that needs to remain true, tamper-proof, and with a verifiable chain of custody. Car cams, body cams, CCTV, computers and all forms of communication records are driving this growth. According to IDC research, by the end of 2021, there will be roughly $1.2B in IT (hardware, software, and services) costs for body-worn cameras and in-car cameras alone. IDC also noted that in Duluth, Illinois, body-worn cameras average 150MB/day/officer of storage and San Diego’s estimated storage costs for 1,450 cameras amount to US$3.5 million.

A challenge for law enforcement agencies is their ability to address critical business priorities: managing data creation growth — without spending more; storing data — with a chain of evidence preserved immutability; retaining and sharing data with approved and authorized people — all regulations and compliance requirements assured. These priorities require a solution that combines private blockchain and object storage.

A private blockchain is a distributed ledger where data is continuously available to multiple parties, immutability where the history of data events is cryptographically verifiable and permission access, access limited to authorized parties. Software-defined object storage (SDOS) enables a law enforcement organization to manage the dramatically growing video data costs by leveraging the lower cost cloud storage business model.

STORAGE STRATEGIES IN LAW ENFORCEMENT (IDC)

Leonovus’ Blockchain Evidence Locker (BEL) is our unique combination of private blockchain and object storage technologies. By marrying these two together we are increasing the value. BEL records all evidence submissions, supports access monitoring and reporting new evidence submissions, updates, and deletion events. All of this is managed by the responsible agency or police force. With SDOS the organization is able to take their digital assets and move them to multiple clouds for archive or backup, reducing their storage costs and ensuring no cloud vendor lock-in.

For more on how Leonovus’ Blockchain Evidence Locker, read the press release http://leonovus.com/blog/leonovus-launches-blockchain-evidence-locker-product-for-the-law-enforcement-and-legal-markets or visit http://new.leonovus.com/resources/use-cases/law-enforcement-public-safety.